Sector(s)

Project Team

Acro Media:
Tyler_Marshall
hubbs
cbildstein
tculling

Commerce Guys:
mglaman

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Organizations Involved

Community contributions

https://www.drupal.org/project/commerce
https://www.drupal.org/project/zuora

Commerce for Drupal 8 is still largely being developed. A fair bit of this project was built while also furthering along the Commerce module. The integration with Zuora didn't exist prior to this project. This module was created to help connect Zuora and Drupal.

Have you ever visited a website and during your visit, you’ve searched for help, wanted to send a complaint or needed advice from the company you’re browsing? Enter, the chat box. That helpful pop up in the corner of the screen, offering a friendly hand in a passive manner allows for visitors to have questions answered on the fly, establish rapport, confidence and ultimately create a conversion from a prospect to a customer…. That’s LivePerson, and it uses Drupal Commerce.

LivePerson’s services and tools have skyrocketed in growth in the marketspace and a code-base was needed to support the pace and stretched needs of this business model; LivePerson turned to Drupal and Drupal Commerce to provide this subscription based implementation to allow their customers to add on to their sites. The brand-to-customer support platform had to stay on pace with labels using the chat-ware such as Microsoft, Adobe and IBM; an open source code base was the only answer.

When your company is providing customer service support for global brands on this scale, ensuring your product stays secure, adaptive and at the bleeding edge of technology becomes your competitive advantage in selling in the marketspace, we were up for the challenge.

About the project

B2B SOLUTIONS

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LivePerson

Streamlining company operations and creating a "digital-first" customer service approach reduced costs by up to 48%.

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Project highlights

  • Secure & connected commerce platform.
  • Complete systems integration with legacy services.
  • Expert designed UX for personalized checkout flows

Streamlining operations and creating a "digital-first" customer service approach are big concerns for B2B organizations.

B2B companies are looking for ways to create efficiencies and become disruption-proof by digitizing their business models for the buyers. Embracing digital strategies can help B2B organizations:

  • Optimizing commerce architecture to support integration and improve data flow.
  • Automating manual work processes to free up resources to focus on other business-building initiatives.
  • Improving the online experience to offer expertly curated customer experiences.

Our work with LivePerson showcases how Acro Commerce was able to help this B2B organization bridge the gap between legacy and new product solutions to create an unparalleled customer experience and address sales objectives by improving data flow.

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Background

LivePerson: Helping the world’s largest brands connect with their customers at scale through AI-powered messaging.

Have you ever visited a website and, during your session, searched for help, wanted to send a complaint or needed to get advice from the company you’re browsing? Enter the chatbox. That helpful pop-up in the corner of the screen, passively offering a friendly hand, allows visitors to have questions answered on the fly, establish rapport, confidence and ultimately create a conversion from a prospect to a customer; that’s LivePerson.

LivePerson is a subscription-based brand-to-customer support platform. Through their online support centers, LivePerson supports millions of customers for companies like Microsoft, Adobe, and IBM, with various technical and sales support levels.

When LivePerson came to Acro Commerce, they faced a commerce architecture redesign and had some specific pain points. They needed to connect a platform that not only supported subscription ecommerce but also used custom checkout flows and had API integration into a variety of software and services they already used, including their own proprietary software LiveEngage.

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Objective

Integration with third-party SaaS platforms, proprietary software and consolidation of backend management functions for improved workflows and cost-efficiency.

LivePerson had already settled on an open source framework but lacked the specific in-house skills and expertise to execute. They understood that they needed help to properly conceptualize the central nervous system of the headless setup to ensure scalability for the future.

They knew what their customers wanted from their online shopping and account management experience:

  • Seamless user flow for both customers and sales agents when developing customized support packages.
  • A personalized and intuitive UX that was flexible and responsive to the product needs of their customers.
  • Security.

LivePerson also understood their business objectives and operational requirements:

  • Ensure the platform was secure and functioned seamlessly.
  • Quickly add new products, services and promotions to meet tactical marketing objectives.
  • Overcome the limitations of their current UX that was directly contributing to lost sales.
  • Connect all operational data and leverage these cross-functional reports to foster a more proactive management approach.
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Solution

LivePerson wanted a commerce and architecture solution that supported:

  • Melding two business practices and workflows into one system.
  • Consolidation of the backend management to achieve more efficiencies.
  • A project management system the client could support internally.
  • A best practices ecommerce experience and specific custom checkout flow for diverse customer types.

Using Acro Commerce’s strategic development process, our teams took on a discovery process that uncovered and accommodated the needs of all stakeholders in the LivePerson organization. It also led to a greater understanding of LivePerson's commerce ecosystems and the underlying elements it required.

Modules and custom integrations built for this project:

  • API integrations for several software and services that LivePerson already had in place.
  • Integration of the proprietary software LiveEngage and a newly acquired product, Contact at Once!
  • Bi-directionally connected integration of SalesForce to LiveEngage.
  • Drupal Commerce: The ecommerce module used to handle products, checkout flows, and integrations with the other platforms LivePerson uses.
  • AvaTax: Avatax was used to automate tax calculations using their simple and up-to-date tax calculation API.
  • Zuora: Zuora is the subscription software LivePerson uses. Acro Media created a module to integrate Drupal Commerce with Zuora's API.
  • Bootstrap: Bootstrap was used as a base template for the LivePerson theme. It’s an excellent starting point to then build their product, checkout and user account pages off of.
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Outcome

Open source architecture bridged the gap between legacy and new product solutions to create an unparalleled customer experience and address sales objectives.

The new architecture gave LivePerson: 

  • Integrated legacy systems and new products for a customized check-out flow.
  • Client access to subscription data on mobile and tablet.
  • Automated customer service with a built-in feedback loop for real-time issue resolution.
  • Seamless connection and communication between sales and marketing for real-time analytics and updated customer records.
  • Flexible and responsive UX for a personalized customer experience.
  • Secure and connected commerce platform that integrated completely with legacy services.
  • Connected operational data reporting to support a proactive management approach.
  • More sales and decreased operational costs.
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Project features

  • Integrated legacy systems and new products, for a customized check-out flow.
  • Automated customer service with a built-in feedback loop for real-time issue resolution.
  • Seamless connection between sales & marketing for real-time analytics and updated customer records.
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Why Drupal was chosen

They needed to connect a platform that not only supported eCommerce, but also custom checkout flows and API integration into a variety of software and service they already used, including their own proprietary software LiveEngage. Drupal, with Drupal Commerce, was a perfect fit to achieve these goals and set them up for the future requirements.

Live Person site on iPad

Technical Specifications

Drupal version:

Key modules/theme/distribution used:

Why these modules/theme/distribution were chosen
  • Drupal Commerce: The eCommerce module used to handle products, checkout flows, and integrations with the other platforms LivePerson uses.
  • AvaTax: Avatax was used to automate tax calculation using their simple and up-to-date tax calculation API.
  • Zuora: Zuora is the subscriptions software LivePerson uses. The module was created to integrate Drupal Commerce with their API.
  • Bootstrap: Bootstrap was used as a base template for the LivePerson theme. It’s an excellent starting point to then build their product, checkout and user account pages off of.